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Services & Software

Basic Concepts

If your website traffic depends upon people that may want your product or service finding you on the Internet among hundreds of thousand other websites ... and they do not yet know who you are ... your site needs to appear in the major search engines! Knowing this to be true is obvious but knowing what to do about it is far less obvious than it may seem.

Heard about those services that submit your site to 300 or more top search engines for a modest sum? Well first of all, there are only about 12 truly significant search engines (Yahoo, Google, AltaVista, etc.) and second, simply submitting your site and moving on to other affairs will no longer suffice if you are looking for good rankings and relevant search phrase listings.

No doubt a few people stumble accross a loophole once in a while that gets a top listing on a particular search engine without much effort. But for the long haul, careful attention to details and persistance with a realistic game plan will bring the greatest rewards over time.

The following three topics discuss what many have found to be a sound approach to acquiring good search engine listings. There are no secrets or miracle technologies involved though we do recommend one piece of software highly if you are serious about producing results, WebPosition Gold by FirstPlace Software. We also recommend one web service, WordTracker. If you can resist clicking on the links to them for a while and read on, you will know why we make these recommendations.

Search Engine Readiness

The first place to start when looking for good search listings is with the design and content of the website itself. We would NEVER suggest that a website be designed for the sole purpose of obtaining good search rankings! Design your website to appeal to your visitors and provide the message and content that makes sense to the user. But, whatever its design, take the time to evaluate it for search engine performance. Most of all, make sure that basic structural tasks have been attended to. To the novice site designer they may aquire an importance bordering on obsessive behavior and be carried too far. To the seasoned veteran, they may be lost in the rush to complete complex work on time and under budget. Regardless ... these elements need to be properly attended to in the building process of all web sites in order to expect the site to be "search engine ready."

• All pages need to have relevant and unique titles in the Title Tag.

  • Page titles are important to users because they show at the top of the browser window and is the text saved with the link if the user saves the page as a bookmark.

  • Page titles are used by most robot driven search engines as a component of their ranking scheme and/or as the actual listing on the search results page.

• All images need to have relevant text in the Alt Tags.

  • In the days of terribly slow modems many people surfed with graphics turned off and depended upon the Alt Tag text to guide them through the site. This may remain a viable justification for including text in these tags but it is also true that the user will be able to see this text while the images load and a significant impression can be presented by using relevant copy.

  • Some search engines do "read" this text and include it in the ranking scheme.

• All primary pages should have relevant Description and Keyword copy in the META Tags.

  • Originally this text was intended to be specifically used by services such as the search engines but the search engines have grown warey of the page author's ability to be trusted in this regard and no longer rely heavily upon the copy that is placed there. However, it is still used to varying degrees and should not be eliminated!

  • The act of preparing Meta Tag Keywords and Phrases can be fundamental to the process of "Enhancement" and establishing a strategy for targeting the best words and phrases to seek high ranking listings on with the various search engines.

• Make sure that no technology utilized on the site (frames, re-directs, dynamically generated pages, etc.) will discourage search engines from spidering the site without taking appropriate action to offset the impact.

• Create a "robots.txt" file for the site that will help keep the robots from listing inappropriate pages.

• Write pages with relevant content! This may seem very obvious but the manner in which most engines currently rank web sites relies heavily on how they decipher the value of the content.

  For a new site being completed and made ready for live release or an existing site that undergoes regular maintenance and updating, these basic issues remain of equal importance. Include methods by which these elements are proofed along with spelling, content, and functionality. The benefit will be a site that performs better in the search engine listings on its own merrit and one whose performance will be easier to enhance once any weakness is determined.

  And now ... about those Meta Tag Keywords and Phrases! When preparing a site that requires good search engine performance, it is crucial to think like your prospective visitors and prepare a list of all "root" words that you believe describe your site's offering(s). Then, determine how often these words are actually searched on and in what phrases they are actually used. The WordTracker service is available for just this purpose. Learn what words and phrases people are searching on. By targeting those that match your site's purpose you will be able to focus effort on known values instead of simply guessing.

  By preparing a list of Keywords and Phrases that are known to have searching value, you can start by including them as is appropriate (remember to retain relevancy) in your page's Meta Tags. These words and phrases are also invaluable for use in the Enhancement process.

The Submission Process

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Optimization Techniques

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